Crypto is significantly newer and only started being 99.999% scammers and on balance detrimental to society relatively recently. It’s also less understandable than exchanging money.
If it makes you feel any better, crypto regulation is around the corner.
E.g., use it to donate to sci-hub, ...
...
It definitely has a use case.
I mean, I'd love to change my snarky one-element list to a zero-element list!
Let's not forget Crypto mining has a not insignificant energy footprint, and is a driver of climate change. Really, detrimental to society from the get-go.
So do casinos and Las Vegas. Its basically the same thing
You just submit that you already paid taxes on that income to a foreign government and then no additional US taxes (to a limit, I beleive).
To which state would one owe taxes to since you're no linger a resident?
Similarly, Americans abroad vote, but ppl in DC (not a state) cant?
Can I avoid state taxes by sojourning in DC before moving abroad?
Generally the rules will be something like you remain a tax resident of your old state, regardless of how long you stay abroad, until you establish a new permanent tax residency (whether in a new state or country).
What I eventually did is return to the US, sign a 1 month lease in Florida so I could get a drivers license and register to vote, and then return abroad. According to my tax accountant, that was enough.
Canada's rules are like that and I like it!
It's not like we give up everything but leaving the country.
And your citizenship allows you to get visas/dual citizenships that you wouldn't have access to if you weren't an American citizen. An American passport is pretty valuable, even if you don't live in America.
This is all less relevant if you move to, say, the EU, but it's still worth noting.
The only one, guys.
If your property tax keeps going up but nothing gets better in town, are you gonna trust the tax man?
That being said, if you know when are are leaveing,.where you are going, and when you will be home, you can often put a vacation note on your account, and then the bank will know you are on vacation. That is what I did when I spent this summer in Japan, using.my bank debit card because it has no foreign transaction fees, the whole time.
We must reside in different countries. Being in USA, I observe we did drop enforcement on the southern border.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/23/kama...
"... administration has ended the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocol, a policy that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as they await their court hearings, and has halted construction on a wall ..."
"... building up to 20 miles of border wall because he has to. The administration said that it was bound to build this section of new wall because Congress already appropriated the funding to do so in 2019. It had been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to rescind the funding, Mr. Mayorkas said."
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-border-wall-material-auct...
It's like USA personality changes every few months, and there are unlimited funds for these games.
If you want better service, there are two ways. One is to be an ultra high net worth individual. But the threshold for that is pretty high - from what I recall, real private banking nowadays starts around $5M to 10M in assets with a single institution. The term "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it did in the 1990s.
The other option is to go with a small local bank or a credit union. If you're in a CU with 10,000 members, it's a lot easier to resolve problems or discuss unique circumstances.
1: https://www.us.hsbc.com/checking-accounts/products/premier/
"Expats" is also used for elderly retirees moving to the Costa Del Sol, so IME it's not a particularly high-income or white-collar term.
Now, if you were talking about "non-doms" that would be a different matter :)
Of course, I agree that a bank accustomed to dealing with expatriates would probably be understanding of someone spending a lot of time in another country.
Expats are all English when they are outside the UK - be they retired in Spain or living / working in Dubai / Asia / Australia.
high net worth New Zealanders from a diverse range of backgrounds. Typically our clients have at least $1.5 million to invest, or significant lending with a personal annual income of $400,000 or more. *Additional income criteria may applyI’ve had zero problems. I think we’re all getting excited about anecdotes.
The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.
Keep your US address on there and VPN (though frankly I’ve never needed to for anything other than Charles Schwab) and you often glide through unnoticed.
I've been doing it for the last 7 years without any problems.
Amex are less accepted because they have a higher processing fee.
What all the people profiled in the article have in common is that they were depositing money in "suspicious" ways.
Turns out my ATM card worked fine while I was over there. I did let the bank know I would be there and I kept my address in the US though. My card got locked at one point which was a disaster since it was strictly a cash economy. I put the card into an ATM that was apparently being serviced or something. I had to get on Skype (remember Skype?) to call my bank to straighten it out. Once they gave me the go ahead I tried the next day only to be denied again. Turned out Visa wanted to talk to me as well. Thankfully they did not cancel the card, I have no idea how I would have gotten a replacement.
Since I told the bank ahead of time that I was going to be going many places the ATM card worked all over the place: Yemen, Dubai, Qatar, Turkey, Greece, Malta… Everywhere except China lol. Had to use my credit card there.
I am just average white US citizen who was working on oil rigs but most likely some of my whatsapp/facebook/iMessage contacts were related to families involved in dissidence against the Saudi government (because the oil region of Saudi is populated by a minority Shia group that is severely underrepresented in governance). Their mosques also had individuals with mental health issues who occasionally try to bomb the mosques in a very, very similar parallel to school shooters back home here in USA.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...
However, this means that something changed with regards to perception of Palestine. My initial thought was that someone too important got banned from Chase.
Funny you criticize crypto, when it actually solves all the bullshit you're mentioning.
It's so nice knowing for a fact that when I send or receive crypto, it will 100% arrive within moments, unlike the absolute shitfest that is international transfers (like SWIFT).
Crypto today is the only way how you can take control of your own funds.
What use is the money in your Bank account if the ruling political party can label you an ultra-right extremist and retroactively lock all your money down, just because of a single 1$ donation you did to a cause you believed to be right, like Canada did?
> Even a $20 donation to the Freedom Convoy after Feb. 15 could result in the donor’s bank accounts being frozen, a Commons committee heard Tuesday.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-small-donation-t...
Nitpick: about half the time (on sufficiently long term average), they'll instead label you a ultra-left extremist (most infamously anti-COMINTERN initiatives in the 1930s-1950s, but it tends to wobble back and forth depending on what's politically convenient).
Well, digging a hole in the forest and storing money there technically remains an option.
May be more viable than crypto for certain rare use cases.
Sure, there are problems with banks and goverment overreach, but those need to be fixed, not completely replaced with a worse alternative.
It's very hard for any layman to gleam even surface level tech info from the news, politicians etc. because any statements from politicians are by definition influenced by lobbyists.
Senator XXXX not understanding (or feigning ignorance) of a tech issue has nothing to do with the color tie the politician is wearing. Democrats and republican parties are for-profit businesses that aren't a part of our constitution, and are lobbied by the tech industry to lie to you.This is all public information.
Fun fact I love to reiterate: Neither of the major party presidential candidates in 2016 knew how to use a desktop computer IE; windows, keyboard, mouse. But they both have made millions from investing in tech. But they would not know how to make a cursor move in windows 11. That should be a terrifying signal about our politicians and the effect they have on downstream tech-thought.
Those are covered by local laws. What protections do you think are missing from crypto that is different from other areas?
Make sure to hold my bag for me.
He's not wrong
There should be more enforcement on dubious banking transactions, numerous Australian banks have had some big fines because they were literally facilitating money laundering on cartel-scale amounts of money for years. Makes me cringe when they crack down on a Joe Nobody who's obviously not, at even a quick glance, some kind of mule / druglord.
By crypto I'm assuming you mean USD.
Not only USD, but actual US weapons in the hands of US adversaries.
Sigh.
Last I heard, wise.com is outright stealing people's money now.
Otherwise, this is a good heads-up. Banking for expats can be tricky; a lot of US financial institutions don't want to service customers who live overseas, and will automatically cancel your account if they find out you don't live in the US.
The US is looking more and more like the old Soviet Union, where people weren't allowed to leave. Even China doesn't have this problem; there are tons of Chinese expats living in democratic nations, and they don't have problems like this.
I’ve moved the majority of my money out since it feels like they might fold soon, there’s just a lot of things on autopay with that account so it’s kind of a hassle to move everything off.
Anecdotally it definitely also seems to be related if you deal with the third world much, as the linked OP below and myself are. Luckily the worst I've come across is arbitrary extra KYC popping up exactly as I'm needing to do time-sensitive transfers.
Good thread on recent events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38069117
Thank you for the thread link
Of course, that doesn't help if you don't just look weird but actually are weird. Spending a lot of time overseas is not weird in itself, because it's common enough. Some specific international situations are weird. Because such situations are rare, it's not cost-effective for the bureaucracy to develop processes for dealing with them fairly.
Banks are about to lose more trust, and money. I'll be doing some research into my credit union as well. Can't trust these institutions, man.
The only catch seems to be that I had to buy a share in the company that I assume they make interest on later. Seems fair enough, and I haven't heard of anyone's account being closed randomly, at least not yet.
The onus should not be on us to fit their model, but on them to fit their model to reality.
Wise is like Paypal 2.0. If you sneeze the wrong way, they'll freeze your account.
Protip: chill.
I have never in my life seen someone identity a problem and then blame the solution this quickly.
Also, if you get flagged in one of these services, they usually send your info to similar companies and they either close your account or don't let you create new accounts.
Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use services like wise.com for transfers, and limit your overseas spending with American cards to only a credit card issued with a bank that isn’t the same as your primary accounts.
Yay, patriot act. Glad we have so much energy focusing on legit bankers instead of the crypto that is actually funding multiple US adversaries at this very moment